Words by Carol Wright | Photos courtesy of Alana Duqum team
We spoke with singer Alana Duqum about the songwriting process for her new EP: Talk To Me.
Did you grow up in a creative household?
Yes, 100 percent. I grew up in a little suburb outside of Detroit, Michigan and my dad was actually an Arabic Opera singer and my mom was a dancer and an artist. There was just a lot of art going on in my household so I spent a lot of my time singing in front of the mirror with a microphone.
So was there never any discouragement when it came to you wanting to be a singer?
I mean there was some hesitancy because my dad wanted to be a musician and a successful one and make that his full-time income, but it never really happened. So he kind of discouraged me in certain ways and told me, ‘This isn’t a very realistic job and it’s going to be a very challenging path,’ but at the same time he always said, ‘You can do anything you want in this life.’ So I kind of just went with that one versus the realistic view.
I never really thought I could make this a career for myself until I was maybe in high school when I joined a performing arts high school. I had two hours of dance, one hour of singing, one hour of acting, and then math and language, and we did Broadway productions after school. So that ended up becoming my life and I realized I could actually do this. Then I moved out to LA when I was 18 after I graduated high school and I was like, ‘I’m just gonna figure this out.’ I do acting as well so I was studying in different classes for years and then I just decided music has always been where my heart is and I always wanted to sing. So I wanted to go full force with my managers and create an album and really just dive into what my heart was set on.
Did you have a specific teacher in high school that really motivated you or was it the classes themselves?
Yea, I had some really amazing teachers that believed in me so much in high school and some that didn’t, some that didn’t really care about their students. I had one teacher, his name was Mr. Bersman, and he was my acting teacher and he would stay after school with me and really just be amazed at the stuff I could do and encourage me and talk to the other teachers about me. We would have these little awards at the end of the year and one of the awards I won was best actress for that year because of a play I was in, that was his play.
There were some really great people there and just, in general, doing these large broadway size productions where we had teachers come train us from broadway. I mean it just encouraged me so much when I ended up booking the lead role at a certain point in high school and there are only four people that get a lead role in the school the four years that you’re there and I ended up getting one of them. So it was a lot of encouragement and a lot of growth in that process, especially when I’m getting to hone in on all of my skills: acting, dancing, and singing. It was really amazing. I’m very lucky that I got that experience.
What was the hardest song to write and record from your EP?
The hardest one was I definitely think “Something Bout You” because the first song we wrote for this project was “Talk To Me” and that went so well and we were just so obsessed with that song. I mean we just had a listening party a few days ago and everyone’s favorite song, the general consensus was “Talk To Me” so that one was just such a hit for us and I just love that song. So then “Something Bout You” came right after that and we went in with some of the same people, the producer and one of the writers and I was like, ‘I really want it to be even bigger, even better and I want it to be this big like Beyonce kind of record and blah blah blah’. I put a lot of pressure on us in the room and I learned that perfection is really the enemy of creation. So for an hour, we couldn’t think of anything and we were going back and forth between two different production tracks before we even decided on writing something and then one of my writers was just sitting there listening to the beat for “Something Bout You” and he was just rocking back and forth and was like, ‘something bout you’ and I was like, ‘oh my God! I love that. Let’s write around that.’ Then I wrote from there and it ended up flowing much easier after that.
“Lying To You” which is the first track was more out of my comfort zone because it has more R&B and Hip Hop influences to it and as a vocalist, I really like a song to climb vocally and I just think it’s more exciting to hear, to the ear and that one doesn’t climb. It’s very steady and it’s very simple and that was kind of out of my comfort zone. I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can pull this off. I want it to go up’ but they were like, ‘let’s just finish it and let’s hear how it sounds’ and it ended up being a fan favorite as well. Sometimes the simple songs are more catchy to people.
What inspired the sound of the title track “Talk to Me”?
Basically I was listening to tons of different production tracks, different producers would show me different stuff and sometimes we’d write to the track and sometimes we write lyrics before the track and we build the track around it. This one, in particular, our producer was showing me a bunch of different tracks he’d created and nothing was really moving me and the second I heard the “Talk To Me” track and the drop and the beat on it I just lost it. I was like, ‘this is my song, you’re not giving this to anybody’ and he was like, ‘ok this is yours’. Then I remember I was not sure what we were gonna write about and I had just started a new relationship and the guy I had started dating at the time brought me flowers that day that I went in, to write because he knew I was gonna go record this big song. So he brought me flowers before I went in and I went in and I was just like, ‘oh I’m so happy, this guy just did all these things for me’ and they were like, ‘Wow that’s amazing!’ I was like, ‘I’m so scared to open up to him because I haven’t had a genuine relationship in a long time that wasn’t toxic’. So it kind of set the tone for the whole album because it’s really about communication and being able to open up to someone and I was having a hard time opening up to this guy and vice versa so we wrote about that. Then after that, I made the entire album because every song on here really deals with the challenges of communication and I believe there is no relationship without communication. First of all, it’s probably my favorite song on the album and then basically it is the whole tone of the album.
How has it been getting feedback for the EP? Does positive feedback energize you to continue making music?
Yea, 100 percent. The feedback has really been what has been pushing me to keep going. I’ve been getting so much good feedback from everyone and so much support. So many people are willing to collaborate with us, share the music, support us and really believe in what we’re doing. It’s really motivated me to keep going and to keep creating and to start doing shows and to do all these things because of how amazing everyone has been. I was really set on doing a Pop project for a long time so this album is completely Pop. In the future, I might even wanna do some songs mixed with my culture a little bit more. Camila Cabello’s doing a really good job of that right now with different sounds that are not just from American Pop music. I’m kind of wanting to do that as well but with middle eastern music, a little bit and Shakira did a really good job of that too back in the day. I feel like I would love to experiment with some new things but for the most part it’s always probably going to stay Pop.
What advice do you have for aspiring singers?
Make sure you really love this because it’s a lot of work and you really have to make things happen more than anyone else and I really made this whole project happen for myself. Even though I had people around me who definitely connected dots and introduced me to some of the right people and that stuff is so important and of course, in general, you can’t do things without people but you’re the one that’s running the show and you really have to find a way to make it happen for yourself. Also, just keep creating and don’t give up.
